VisionMobile Developer Economics Q3 2014 Light

Contents
About VisionMobile
VisionMobile is the leading research company on the apps economy and mobile business models. Our research
helps clients track app developer trends and master mobile business models.
1. The Platform Wars Go Local
Developer Economics is our semi-annual industry research series, tracking app developer trends, attitudes,
experiences and monetization by region.
3. To go native, or not to go native, that is the question
Our mantra: distilling market noise into market sense.
5. The Next Gold Rush - Enterprise Apps
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London WC2E 9RZ
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6. State of the Game Developer Nation
TM
2. The Language of Apps

4. The Disappearing Middle Class of App Developers
7. Tools of the App Developer Trade

8. The Diverse Spectrum of App Developers
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Also by VisionMobile
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3. Representations, Warranties and Disclaimer
North American App

Developer Trends 2014
App Profits and Costs

2014
VisionMobile believes the statements contained in this publication to be based upon information that we consider reliable, but we do
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Copyright VisionMobile Developer
2014 - v.1.5
Developer Segmentation 2013

Economics | State of the Developer Nation Q3 2014 | VisionMobile | All rights reserved | www.developereconomics.com/go
App Economy Forecasts

2013-2016
ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Mark Wilcox
Business Analyst
Christina Voskoglou
Data & Operations Manager
Mark has over 13 years of experience in mobile software across a

variety of roles, however, he got his first computer at 4 years of age
and wrote his first program at 7. He will probably always be a
developer at heart. A growing interest in economics and business
models has led him to work with VisionMobile as a Business Analyst,
whilst still keeping his development skills up to date on independent
development and consulting projects.
Christina is responsible for all VisionMobile data projects. She leads

data analysis, survey design and methodology for VisionMobiles
Developer Economics research series and is also behind
VisionMobiles developer segmentation research. Prior to joining
VisionMobile, Christina served as Customer Relationship Manager
for the Household Lending Unit of EFG Eurobank. She has more
than 15 years of experience in BI design, statistical consulting and
data mining.
You can reach Mark at:

mark@visionmobile.com
@__MarkW__
You can reach Christina at:

christina@visionmobile.com
@ChristinaVoskog
Developer Economics | State of the Developer Nation Q3 2014 | VisionMobile | All rights reserved | www.developereconomics.com/go
About Developer Economics

Welcome to the State of the Developer Nation Q3 2014, the 7th
edition of Developer Economics - the leading research program on
mobile developers and the app economy, tracking developer
experiences across platforms, revenues, apps, tools, APIs, segments
and regions. The Developer Economics program investigates the
latest trends in mobile development via developer surveys reaching
up to 10,000 app developers in over 130 countries, 6 times a year.
This is the 7th edition Developer Economics: State of the Developer
Nation report and presents the key findings from the largest, most
global developer survey to date with over 10,000 respondents from
137 countries. This research report delves into the key mobile
development trends, as identified in our survey, and discusses
platform consolidation, languages, consumer vs. enterprise revenues,
developer tools, segments and more!
7. Developer tools - Revenues of developers using tools, top tool

categories
8. Developer segments - Characteristics, sizes and revenues for all 8
developer segments
We hope youll enjoy this report and find the insights useful!
If you have any questions or comments or are looking for additional
data, you can get in touch at matos@visionmobile.com. You can also
find an online version of our report at
www.DeveloperEconomics.com/go
Mark, Christina, Matos, AndreasP, AndreasC, Dimitris, Vanessa,

Chris, Alex, Nick, Michael and Stijn at VisionMobile.
The report focuses on eight major themes each comes with its own
infographic:
1. Platform wars go local - Global vs. regional Mindshare
Thank you
2. Language ranking - Most popular vs. most actively used

programming languages
Wed like to thank everyone who helped us reach an unprecedented

number of respondents for our survey, and create this report:
3. Language lock-in - Language mix for Android, iOS, Windows

Phone, BlackBerry
Our Marketing and Research Partners Digia, Intel, Microsoft,

Mozilla and Nokia.
4. App monetization - App revenues globally, Android vs. iOS, app

revenue split
Our Regional and Media Partners, who are too many to number here
you know who you are!
5. Consumer vs. enterprise - Revenues for developers targeting

consumers vs. enterprises
Also, the developers and mobile insiders that took the time and
interest to share their experiences with us.
6. Game developers - Revenues for mobile game developers, top

platforms and tools
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The 7th Developer Economics survey has once again broken all
records, including responses from more than 10,000 app developers
and 137 countries. This State of the Developer Nation report brings
you the most important findings from the survey, showcasing the
latest trends in the platforms, languages and tools that app
developers are using and how much money theyre making. We also
take a deep dive into both enterprise and games developers.
Platform Wars
On a global level, the platform wars are ending with iOS claiming the
majority of the high-end device market and Android winning almost
everywhere else. Windows Phone continues to gain developer
mindshare steadily at 28%, although the users have not followed.
At a local level there are still many countries, including China, India
and most of South America, where the battle for developers and
users continues. Apple needs local developer support for
differentiation at the high end and Windows Phone is attempting to
gain a foothold against Android with first time smartphone buyers at
the low end.
Developer attention is consolidating around fewer platforms. The
average number of platforms a developer targets has fallen from 2.9
to 2.2 over the last 12 months.
BlackBerry 10 is rapidly leaking developer mindshare, down to 11%,
having failed to gain traction with consumers.
The future of HTML5 is beyond the browser. Although HTML5 is

used by 42% of developers as a technology for app development, only
15% still target mobile browsers as a distribution platform.
Development Languages
HTML5 is the most widely used technology at 42% of developers
with Java, the native language on Android, the next most popular at
38%. However, if we look at the primary languages developers use
when creating their apps, Java takes the top spot at 26% with
Objective-C for iOS in second at 17%.
C# remains popular with 14% of developers using it as their primary
language, suggesting that Microsoft still has an opportunity to be a
major force in mobile development, even if they dont control the
mobile OS layer.
A surprisingly high 47% of iOS developers and 42% of Android
developers are using something other than the native language on
their platforms.
Hybrid apps are the most popular non-native option for building
Android and iOS apps, used by 13% of developers. Hybrid apps are
HTML5 apps with a native wrapper, typically created by tools such
as Cordova.
While 63% of Windows Phone developers are using Microsofts C#,
there are almost as many C# developers on Android and iOS
combined. This suggests Microsoft should increase their focus on

common tooling for mobile developers across platforms.
App Revenues
The majority of app businesses are not sustainable at current revenue
levels. 50% of iOS developers and 64% of Android developers are
below the app poverty line of $500 per app per month.
24% of developers interested in making money earn nothing at all. A
further 23% make less than $100 per app per month.
The overall app economy, including all revenue sources not just the
app stores, is still growing but the revenues are highly concentrated.
At the top end of the revenue scale there are just 1.6% of developers
with apps earning more than $500k per month, collectively they earn
multiples of the other 98.4% combined.
Games Developers
Games dominate app store revenues, yet most games developers
struggle. 33% of developers make games but 57% of those games
make less than $500 per month. Experience wins, the more games a
developer has shipped the more likely they are to be financially
successful. However, 70% of games developers have shipped less
than 4 titles.
Games is a multi-platform world with the average games developer
targeting 3 platforms versus 1.75 platforms for non-games
developers.
Multi-platform games benefit from cross-platform game development
tools with Unity by far the most popular, used by 47% of game
developers. The next paid tool, Adobe Air, comes a distant second at
15%.
Enterprise Developers
Tools of the Trade
67% of mobile app developers primarily target consumers and 11%

target professionals directly. The 16% of developers who target
enterprises are twice as likely to be earning over $5k per app per
month and almost 3 times as likely to earn more than $25k per app
per month.
Third party tools are a critical part of successful app businesses.

Theres a strong correlation between tool use and revenues, the more
tools a developer uses, the more money they make. Despite this tool
use is declining, partly due to the rapid influx of new mobile
developers. 26% of developers that are interested in making money
dont use any third party tools.
Currently iOS appears to be winning the battle for enterprise

adoption and revenues. Yet many developers are focusing on the
wrong platform with 10% more enterprise developers targeting
Android than iOS.
Although enterprise apps have been a historical strength for them,
Microsoft and BlackBerry are seeing very weak adoption for their
new platforms amongst enterprise developers due to lack of demand
from enterprises.
The most popular category of tool is Ad Networks, with 30% of

developers using them. However, this is one of the few tool categories
that is not associated with higher than average revenues.
More experienced and successful developers show a preference for
Cloud Computing platforms, with 40% of those with 6+ years
experience in mobile apps adopting them.
THE PLATFORM WARS GO LOCAL

The Android and iOS duopoly commands the attention of both developers and
consumers and remains firmly established. However, the platform wars are not over.
On a global level Microsoft is still fighting to build a sustainable third
ecosystem and making some headway with developers, 28% of whom
now adopt the platform, despite failing to make significant device
market share gains. The mobile computing market is so much bigger
than any before it, that even a tiny share of the market represents an
installed base that is too large for developers with global ambitions to
ignore. Apps aiming for maximum reach with an advertisingsupported business model, or social apps depending on network
effects target any platform with the potential for tens of millions of
users. At the same time, these global apps are now a table stake for
new platforms. A platform without WhatsApp or Instagram, for
example, will struggle to gain acceptance in many countries.
Developer attention consolidates

The problem for any platform wanting to challenge the duopoly
appears at a regional or local level. This is also the level at which the
battle between Android and iOS continues. With global apps
available on all platforms, the strongest differentiator becomes the
niche and local apps. In order to compete with their peers, these
smaller developers increasingly choose to focus on fewer platforms.
The average number of platforms a developer targets has fallen from

2.9 a year ago, through 2.5 in our Q1 report to 2.2 in this survey. If
we exclude games developers (see chapter 6) the average number of
platforms targeted is just 1.75 with 43% of those only targeting 1
platform. Developer mindshare for iOS is down slightly over the last
6 months but this is not fewer developers making the platform their
primary target, just fewer choosing to support both Android and iOS.
In most local markets developer mindshare is related to platform
market share, with a bias towards iOS due to its disproportionate
share of the high-end customers - latest official figures imply that the
average iOS user is worth 4 Android users in terms of store revenues.
Eastern Europe and the former CIS is an interesting exception to this
rule; Android has a massive majority of device sales locally, yet 38%
of developers prefer iOS, exporting their apps to wealthy western
markets. Russia in particular has a high concentration of Hunters,
developers seeking direct revenues from the app economy, combining
their excellent technical skills and lower living costs to compete for
direct revenues on the App Store. In a world where the developers
that differentiate platforms now focus on only the top 1 or 2
platforms in their region, challenger platforms dont stand much
chance of growing their market share.
Windows Phone hanging on, BlackBerry 10 sees weaker

traction
BlackBerry 10 has been hit hardest here as they attempted to sell
premium devices without a broad selection of valuable local content
and services. Without significant device sales, developer mindshare
has fallen to just 11%. They have now decided to ship their devices
with Amazons App Store, moving the focus of their developer
outreach to enterprise and Internet of Things offerings.
targeted the mobile browser as a platform. We also asked about the

programming languages developers use. The result is that only 15%
of developers are targeting mobile browsers and a total of 42% are
using HTML, CSS & JavaScript at all. Its now clear that the
majority of developers using web technologies are not targeting
mobile browsers. Although there are still a lot of hybrid app
developers, the overall proportion of developers using HTML5 on
mobile devices is falling, both through those switching to native code
and new entrants adopting native platforms.
In contrast, Microsoft has been able to gain some traction with lower
cost devices aiming at first-time smartphone buyers with a trusted
brand device, offering a superior overall experience to a comparably
priced Android device. The problem with this low-end device
strategy is that these users dont spend as much on apps and are less
attractive to brand advertisers, which in turn makes them an
unattractive target for developers. With Google having launched the
Android One initiative to provide a quality Android experience in
emerging markets at under $100, Microsofts window of opportunity
here may be closing. They are up against formidable network effects
that make it impossible to win the race with money alone.
HTML5 developers are abandoning the browser

Web technologies have had a very bad year in the battle for developer
mindshare. In our last survey (Q1 2014) we asked developers if they
used HTML5 as a platform to target mobile devices. We also asked
how they used the technology: 37% of HTML5 developers were
building websites or web apps and a further 15% built hybrid apps or
used tools like Appcelerator Titanium to build native apps with
JavaScript. Since HTML5 is a set of technologies and the browser is
the distribution platform, this time we asked developers if they
10
THE LANGUAGE OF APPS

As part of our 10,000+ developer survey, VisionMobile conducted the first-ever large-scale
study of the languages developers use specifically for app development.
We asked both about the primary language developers use to build
apps for their main platform and any other languages they use. Its
interesting to compare our data to other widely read studies of
language popularity because developers use this information to help
them make decisions about where to invest their time and tools
vendors use it to decide which languages to support. Even the
decision to build the Android runtime around the Java language was
not a purely technical one but influenced by the large number of
existing Java developers that could be more easily attracted to a
familiar-looking platform. The many attempts to build platforms
around JavaScript and web apps have similar motivations. In the
graphic you can see which languages are used by more than 10,000
developers and how our ranking compares with those from RedMonk
and TIOBE.
JavaScript and Java top the charts

Our data shows that JavaScript and Java top the charts. This is inline
with the latest RedMonk ranking for the top 2 languages. RedMonk
tracks the number of new projects in each language created on
GitHub and the number of new questions with relevant tags on

StackOverflow. These are good measures of the amount of code and
knowledge being shared around a particular language.
Our research shows that only 15% of developers are targeting mobile
browsers while 42% are using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This
begs the question, what are the rest of them using it for? Looking at
primary languages, only 17% selected this option. This means the
other 25% are only using it part of the time or for parts of their apps;
its a very popular secondary tool.
This secondary use is reflected in the TIOBE 9th place ranking.
TIOBE measures search activity for each language, reflecting what
the largest number of developers are working with across all software
(most developers couldnt function for long without a search engine).
Another factor in the lower TIOBE ranking is that the HTML, CSS
& JavaScript combination is only useful for building user interfaces,
which are the primary component of most mobile apps, whilst less
central when considering all software. As the native language for
Android and widely used on the server side, its not surprising that
Java ranks at or near the top on every measure.
11
12
C, C++ and Objective-C - popular but not shared?
C# and beyond
The next most popular languages in our ranking are C and C++.
These are popular in games development for performance reasons
and there are lots of existing libraries that can be used directly in iOS
projects and with Androids Native Development Kit (NDK). C++ is
also the native language on BlackBerry 10. C and C++ are old
languages and most of the interesting questions have already been
asked and most useful libraries written, so they dont rank as highly
with RedMonk. At the same time, they do show up at the top of the
TIOBE search-based language rankings because they are extremely
widely used in both embedded systems and legacy code bases for
most types of project. As both C and C++ are highly performant but
not very productive languages to work with on complex apps, mobile
developers tend to use them where needed rather than for preference.
Objective-C, as the native language for iOS development, is about as
popular as expected in our study of 10,000+ app developers. By
contrast it only comes 10th in the RedMonk ranking. This is
explained by the weak open source culture around the platform and
the large community on Apples private developer forums. As an
essentially Apple-only language, most of the use of Objective-C is as
a primary language, particularly if we exclude Hobbyists and
Explorers from our ranking so were only looking at full-time
professionals.
Microsofts C# language is the 5th most popular in our research and

has an identical ranking with RedMonk and TIOBE. At 14% of
developers using it as a primary language it is the 4th most popular,
significantly more popular than Windows Phone as a primary
platform. Microsofts monopoly in desktop computing has created a
large base of developers familiar with their technology and toolset.
Many of those developers have looked to continue using some of
their existing skills for mobile apps. This has lead to Microsoft having
greater developer mindshare than their device market share warrants.
It has also created an opportunity for cross-platform tools
(particularly Unity and Xamarin) that enable C# developers to target
the leading platforms.
Creating the right emotions for your customer is more

difficult than building the algorithms or the technology
After C# we have Visual Development Tools, which have a relatively

low ranking for overall usage considering that all of the main
platforms provide some kind of drag and drop UI designer. Possibly
not all developers count their IDEs built-in designer as a Visual
Development Tool. However, as a primary choice, Visual
Development Tools are surprisingly popular given that they are
typically rather limited in what they can create.
Finally, the use of JavaScript without HTML and CSS, along with
languages that compile to it such as CoffeeScript and TypeScript is
popular for cross-platform tools and for mobile backend development
with node.js. Beyond this, popularity drops away rapidly, with hardly
any developers using anything else as a primary development
language, although there is a fairly long tail at the 1% or less level.
Elizabetta Camilleri, Co-founder, SalesGossip
13
TO GO NATIVE, OR NOT TO GO NATIVE, THAT IS THE QUESTION

How many developers are building native apps? What other languages do they use if they
dont go native? Our survey data has the answers.
Adopting the native language and frameworks for a platform
represents a significant learning investment and also makes it more
difficult to port apps to other platforms. The trade-offs are the ability
to exploit all of the functionality and performance of the platform
and the capability to deliver an experience that matches device users
expectations precisely. On the other hand, by adopting a crossplatform approach developers can save significant development costs
when targeting multiple platforms, making it easier to adopt each
new platform. As such, we can use the fraction of developers using
the native language on each platform as a measure of developer
investment and loyalty.
Android leads iOS in priority and loyalty

Android is pulling significantly ahead of iOS as a primary platform
globally (42% versus 32% of developers). This is despite the fact that
Android-first development is not very common amongst the highprofile startups that attract all of the media attention in the West.
Then iOS also has a lower percentage of developers building apps in
its native Objective-C (53%) than Android developers building native
Java apps (58%). If we combine these measures we have 24% of
mobile developers primarily creating native Android apps against just

17% creating native iOS apps; thats a significant advantage to
Googles ecosystem in terms of fully invested developers. The
paradox here is that Apple and Google both seem to be making
strategic moves to close the gap. Apple recognised a weakness with
the relatively small population of Objective-C developers prior to the
launch of the iPhone and initially banned all third-party runtimes and
cross-platform tools, forcing developers to learn Objective-C. Having
relaxed those rules to keep up on application volume theyve now
created Swift, which they hope will lower the perceived barriers to
entry for native development. Googles strategy on the other hand
would really like everyone using web technology so they can more
effectively track users for ad targeting purposes. Their latest design
and technology moves blur the lines between native apps and the
web. They are indexing apps like websites and allowing searches to
deep link. The new Material design lets developers build UIs with a
completely native feel using native or web technologies.
14
15
Microsoft developers the most loyal?
BlackBerry developers are keeping their options open
Windows Phone developers have the highest levels of investment in

their platform with 63% developing apps in the native language, C#.
There are likely multiple reasons for this; first it is hard to develop
most types of app cross-platform and target Windows Phone because
the UI is very different from the other platforms; second, crossplatform games built using Unity (the most popular tool) are also
likely to be using C#; third, Microsofts changes to what can and
cant be used to develop for the platform between WP7 and WP8
make it very difficult to target both versions (and thus the entire
installed base) in many other ways.
For the loyal few remaining developers that still prioritise BlackBerry
10 you might expect to find the highest levels of investment in native
apps. Instead, we see the lowest level of native app developers at 43%
and the greatest fraction of web developers at 27%. This is partly due
to BlackBerry 10 having first class web apps, which goes some way
towards explaining this. Its also a safety net as building a web app,
even one that uses some native platform APIs, does leave developers
with a fairly portable code base if things dont work out. Java is less
popular as a primary language at only 3% of those that prioritise
BlackBerry 10, yet much more popular amongst those who also
target the platform. Adding an Android runtime is a viable way
to bootstrap an app offering with low cost ports, but it doesnt
buy you any developer loyalty. In this context itll be interesting to
watch the fortunes of the initially successful Amazon Fire OS and
Nokia X platforms as they inevitably diverge further from Googles
version of Android.
Microsoft has far greater developer mindshare in its tooling than its
platform. There are almost as many developers using C# with iOS or
Android as their primary platform via Unity and Xamarin as there
are building native apps for Windows Phone. In the case of Xamarin,
developers have to learn the native UI framework on their target
platform as the tool provides a thin wrapper around the APIs. This
still involves significant investment in the platform, whilst sticking
with a preferred language. There are about twice as many C#
developers primarily targeting iOS versus Android, suggesting that
many of them may be using a cross-platform tool to target just the
one platform. This data suggests that Microsoft should accelerate
their recent moves to embrace the other platforms with their tools as
well products. In the same way that Satya Nadellas new strategy has
Microsofts products embrace other platforms, they can enable
existing C# developers to keep using their technology without
missing out on the obvious scale advantages of the other platforms.
The gap between HTML and native is widening. The native

SDKs introduce new APIs at a faster rate than HTML5 can
keep up with. To harness the power of these new APIs native is
the only viable option.
Conny Svensson,
Managing Architect and Strategist - Mobility,
CGI Sweden
16
THE DISAPPEARING MIDDLE CLASS OF APP DEVELOPERS

We estimate there are 2.9 million mobile developers in the world, creating more than 2
million apps. Somehow most of that activity needs to be paid for.
Its been widely reported that a tiny fraction of developers are making
most of the direct revenues from the app stores. Considering
revenues from any source the picture is not much better. The
revenue distribution is so heavily skewed towards the top that just
1.6% of developers make multiples of the other 98.4% combined. It
seems extremely unlikely the market can sustain anything like the
current level of developers for many more years. A large part of this is
down to what developers choose to build (more on that in the
chapter 5) and how they fail to market it. However, Apple and
Google have done such a good job of commoditising their
complements in economics terms that its close to impossible to build
sustainable businesses for many types of apps. This is a loss for users
- even a multi-award-winning productivity app company like
FiftyThree (makers of Paper) is not sustainable as a pure software
business and has to pivot to selling physical items and hardware to go
with their app.
developers make something but less than $100 per app per month.
This level of revenue is unlikely to cover the basic costs of a desktop
machine for development, test devices and an account to publish
apps. Those prioritising iOS are significantly less likely to suffer this
fate, with only 35% earning $0-100 versus 49% of Android
developers and an even higher percentage on all other platforms.
Around 35% of the total developer population are part-timers Hobbyists and Explorers that dont need to make any kind of return
on their apps - even so more than half of those are interested in
making some money from their efforts. Less than half of these
revenue-interested part-timers are making $0 per month, so theres a
very large number of full-time professional app developers whose
apps earn nothing. In some cases these are apps that have not
launched yet, or are trying to build a bigger audience before going for
revenue; others have simply failed, lost on the dusty back shelves of
the app stores where no-one ever sees them.
The Have Nothings - 47%

At the bottom of the app revenue pile, 24% of all developers that are
interested in making money make nothing at all. A further 23% of
17
18
The Poverty Stricken - 22%

Another 22% of developers earn between $100 and $1000 per app
per month. If we consider that the median number of people
involved in development in this revenue band is 3, there are very few
places in the world where this will cover average developer salaries.
On both iOS and Android, 15% of developers earn between $100
and $500 per app per month, leaving just 7% in the upper half of this
revenue band. Overall this puts 62% of developers below our app
poverty line of $500 per app per month and at least 69% that cant
sustain full-time development.
The Strugglers - 19%

The next 19% of developers earn between $1k and $10k per app per
month. This level of revenue could be anything from of good living
to a very nice supplement to freelance work, depending on where in
the world the developer is located. That said, its worth considering
that an app at this level is likely to be more complex, possibly
requiring more development effort or having ongoing server hosting
costs in order to deliver a service. These apps are relatively successful
as products, in that theyre clearly valuable to their customers but
very few of them would be considered a financial success against the
alternatives available to their creators. Strugglers, Poverty Stricken
and The Have Nothings make up a staggering 88% of developers in
total who look more like struggling artists than highly skilled
engineers.
group versus 9% of Android-first developers. For comparison a rank100 grossing game on iOS in the US only would expect to make
about $10k per day. Only the top 1.6% of developers make more
than $500k per app per month and some of those earn tens of
millions of dollars every month. Between them they earn multiples of
all the other developers combined. The next 2%, earning between
$100k and $500k collectively make more money than the remaining
96.4%. Less than 4% of developers who earn between $25k and
$100k again make more than everyone earning less than them
combined. Finally just under 5% of developers who earn between
$10k and $25k make almost as much as the 88% of developers
discussed in the sections above. More than 50% of app businesses
are not sustainable at current revenue levels, even if we exclude the
part-time developers that dont need to make any money to continue.
A massive 60-70% may not be sustainable long term, since
developers with in-demand skills will move on to more promising
opportunities.
I dropped Android due to fragmentation and low revenues.

The revenues from my Android apps were just 10% of those for
my iOS apps.
Marcus Roskosch
Freelancer
The Haves - 12%

The top 12% of developers are the Haves. They make more than
$10k per app per month. 17% of iOS-first developers are in this
19
THE NEXT GOLD RUSH: ENTERPRISE APPS

Developers hoping to build businesses around app development should consider the
audience they develop for very carefully.
The app stores opened up an extremely straightforward method of
both distributing software directly to consumers and monetising it.
That created a very low barrier to entry, which in turn resulted in a
phenomenal amount of competition from all over the world. Today,
app stores are so completely jam packed with consumer apps that an
overwhelming majority of them struggle to get noticed or make any
significant revenue. Even the lucky (and talented) few developers that
get their apps promoted by the stores need to find other marketing
channels too. Most methods of marketing apps cost money,
particularly the scalable ones. Only the apps with the highest
revenues per user can then afford to be discovered by a lot of
potential customers. Despite this dynamic, 67% of developers are
still targeting consumers and a further 11% target individual
professionals directly rather than their employers.
Enterprises adopt mobile, particularly iOS

Smartphones and tablets were introduced as consumer-first
technologies, which led to developers initially building consumer
apps. Now a growing number of enterprises are adopting mobile
technology; this is all businesses, governmental and non-profit
organisations, not just large corporations with IT departments.

Although this wave of adoption is still only in its early phases, already
the 16% of developers who target enterprises are twice as likely to be
earning over $5k per app per month and nearly 3 times as likely to
earn over $25k. The early platform winner here is iOS, with Apple
claiming adoption by 98% of the Fortune 500 companies. Our data
from 10,000+ app developers shows that lead is reflected in the wider
market, with iOS developers targeting enterprises being about 2.5
times more likely to be earning over $25k per app per month than
their Android counterparts.
Enterprise developers adopt Android ahead of iOS

It may come as a surprise but 10% more enterprise developers are
targeting Android than iOS. Perhaps more surprising is that
Microsoft and BlackBerry, the companies with a much greater history
in this market, have very weak adoption by enterprise developers. Are
these developers investing in a future where they see Android
inevitably dominating the enterprise device market as its now doing
with consumers, or are they simply choosing their preferred
technology?
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Its likely that technology preference is trumping business sense,

since the largest fraction of enterprise developers are building native
Android apps, which generate the lowest average revenues. This is in
strong contrast to native iOS apps where 55% of developers make
more than $5k per app per month.
Apple and Google embrace enterprises

The platform owners are providing clear signs that there is much
greater enterprise adoption and significant opportunities for
developers to come. Apple has been rapidly adding features to iOS
over the last couple of years to make it more enterprise friendly.
Theyve also recently announced a strategic partnership with IBM to
deliver products and software solutions for the enterprise. Now that
Microsoft has reversed the strategic decision to keep their Office suite
exclusive to their own platform there are very few barriers to
adoption remaining in large companies. Similarly Google has recently
announced the integration of Samsungs Knox enterprise security
solution into the Android platform and acquired Divide, integrating
their work/personal device splitting solution to support the BYOD
trend. The growth in mobile enterprise development is likely to
include a lot of contract work and niche Software-as-a-Service
subscriptions, nowhere near as much of a winners-take-all market as
the consumer market.
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THE STATE OF THE GAME DEVELOPER NATION

Games dominate the consumer app economy. App Annies figures show that over 80% of
the revenues from app stores are in the games category and that percentage is growing.
A large fraction of mobile ad revenue is also generated by games. Its
not unfair to categorise the consumer apps market as mostly a games
market. Our research across more than 10,000 app developers found
that 33% of developers are making games but the vast majority of
revenues are concentrated amongst a handful of publishers making
10s or even 100s of millions of dollars a year. Almost all of these are
free-to-play games, monetising a tiny fraction of their audience via
consumable in-app purchases. The large number of games with high
quality free content makes getting noticed with a new free title
difficult. At the same time they are destroying the market for pay-perdownload games. The result is that 57% of game developers
intending to generate revenue make less than $500 per app per
month, i.e. fall under the app poverty line.
compared to an average non-games developer at 1.75 according to

our research. This increased portability also shows up as a higher
proportion of games developers on minority platforms. The mobile
browser is the major exception here, since most games are built with
native code for performance and are not easily ported to the web.
BlackBerry 10 also has a lower ratio of games to non-games
developers relative to its popularity. This is likely due to the ease of
porting non-game Android apps but also lack of an NDK
environment that many Android games depend upon. Game
developers priorities are evident in the number of platforms targeted
by those who use each platform. The typical Nokia X game
developer targets almost 6 platforms, meaning that they also target
most of the more popular platforms first.
Seeking revenues across platforms
Unity dominates the tools market
Games generally take over the entire screen of the device and are
unconstrained by the UI conventions of the platform. This makes
games much more portable across platforms than most other apps.
Most games developers take advantage of this, in search of a bigger
audience. The average games developer targets 3 platforms,
In order to go cross platform, a most mobile game developers use

third party tools. Unity is by far the most popular, being used by
47% of game developers. The key attractions of Unity are a visual
editor for manipulating 3D content, an active ecosystem of asset and
plugin creators and relatively low license costs. It also supports all
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major mobile, PC and console platforms. Unity boasts a community

of 2.9 million developers, of which 630,000 are active monthly,
according to the vendor.
The next 3 most popular options for mobile game developers are
either in-house developed or fully open source. It seems a large share
of mobile game developers like to control their own destiny and not
be tied to proprietary third party code. This makes the Unreal Engine
an interesting tool to watch over the next few years. As a crossplatform 3D engine with advanced editing tools its similar to Unity
in many ways. Its technically superior both in terms of graphics
performance and tooling but has historically been massively more
expensive to license for equivalent use to Unity. Having said that, in
March this year Unreal Engine switched to a very low cost monthly
subscription model with a 5% gross revenue share for full source
code access. Although the revenue share will cost much more than a
Unity license for a successful game, it removes the barrier to entry
and gives developers full control of their code.
per month than the 62% who have only shipped between 1 and 3
titles. Supercell might seem like the exception that proves the rule as
the top grossing games publisher worldwide with only 3 titles.
However, the management and majority of developers at Supercell
have a very long history in mobile games, going back to early Java
ME titles more than a decade ago. They also build far, far more
games than they ship - a luxury of wealthy and well-funded
developers. Moreover, in a world where most developers are priced
out of the main promotional channels by the top free-to-play titles,
having a large collection of games that can cross-promote one
another is an extremely valuable marketing advantage. The mobile
games market is undoubtedly highly competitive. Those that really
want to participate should persevere but rather than continuing to
work at updating and marketing a failed title, our data suggests it
may be better to learn from it and build another one instead.
The data from our survey of 10,000+ app developers shows that
Unreal Engine and Marmalade are the tools associated with the
highest revenues for developers using them. These tools have
typically been used to port games from consoles and other handheld
gaming devices and so its not clear if similar results are achieved on
new development projects.
Experience breeds success

Game design is a highly creative art that takes a lot of practice. Angry
Birds was creator Rovios 52nd title. It is therefore not surprising to
find that those who have shipped a lot of game titles are the most
successful. The 3% of mobile game developers who have shipped
50+ titles are nearly 9 times as likely to be earning over $50k per app
25
TOOLS OF THE APP DEVELOPER TRADE

It has never been easier for a solo developer or small team to build a complex softwarebased product or service. The 1,000+ powerful third party tools that are currently available
enable app developers to write less code but they also lead to very high user expectations for
what an app can do.
Only the largest software houses, who can justify the investment
required to build their own toolset, can afford to ignore all third party
tools. Smaller developers choosing to create their own tools are likely
to be left behind with uncompetitive apps or too much time wasted.
Developer tools add value at every step of the developer journey from
prototyping through to customer support. A games developer cannot
justify the cost of building a high performance games engine to build
one game - they probably just want to focus on implementing their
game idea anyway. Similarly building an advertising system and
selling ad inventory directly is a massive effort versus simply
integrating a third party ad network. How can developers know
where to improve their apps if they dont have user analytics or crash
and performance monitoring. Building fully featured versions of these
services is likely to be much more work than the original app idea.
Why dont developers use more tools?

Theres clearly a strong case for developers to adopt third party tools.
Add to this the fact that all of the tool categories in our top 10 have
free options for a developer to get started. It should therefore come as
a surprise that the average developer only uses tools from 2
categories. It makes sense that hobbyists with no intention of making
money from their apps would avoid tools that might incur costs at
some point (although even then there are open source options).
However, 26% of developers that are interested in making money
dont use any third party tools. Of those developers, 79% make less
than $500 per app per month. Worse yet, tools usage is falling, a year
ago only 14% of developers were not using any third party tools. The
category with the highest adoption last year was User Analytics tools
with 38% of developers using them. In this survey only 21% of
developers were integrating User Analytics. Lack of awareness about
what tools are available, particularly as growing numbers of
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developers switch to mobile platforms, is part of the reason but it

cannot be the whole story.
Its not what you use but how you use it

One possible answer to this puzzle is that developers abandon tools
because theyre getting little value out of them. In the case of User
Analytics, the minimal integration only takes minutes but it simply
records how many of each device model has used an app, when and
for how long. It doesnt help provide any insight into why some users
spent longer than others or what they did. To get that developers
have to implement some custom event tracking. Without that extra
work the tool is unlikely to benefit the app, it just provides some low
value statistics. If a developer isnt getting any benefit from the
analytics then theyre more likely to drop it than upgrade to a newer
version when problems arise. For example, many analytics tools
started causing app store review failures because Apple changed their
policy on user privacy and tracking.
Another common case is Cross-Platform Tools (CPTs), which many
developers use very effectively to reduce the costs of building apps for
multiple platforms. It might seem counter-intuitive but there are 26%
of CPT users who only target a single platform. They are most likely
using the CPT to avoid learning the native platform rather than for
greater reach or cost efficiency; a decision to help the developer
rather than the customer. These developers report unusually low
revenues, whilst those using CPTs to target multiple platforms have
slightly higher than average revenues. Its easy for these single
platform CPT users to blame the tool and abandon it in favour of
native development. Instead what really happened was that they used
the wrong tool for the job.
The tools of the successful app developers

More experienced app developers are more likely to use any given
category of tool, although even the most experienced with 10+ years
building mobile apps behind them, still only use tools from 3
different categories on average. The favourite category of the most
experienced and successful developers is Cloud Computing, for
example Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. This category of
tool is used by 40% of developers with more than 6 years experience
build mobile apps.
Use of almost any tool category except Ad Networks - the most
popular - is correlated with higher revenues. There is a very strong
correlation between using more tools and earning more revenue. A
positive feedback loop exists here. More successful apps need more
tools - automated testing, crash and performance monitoring, in-app
help and feedback - and more tools enable further improvement of
the app. This is not the only cause of the correlation though. More
sophisticated app businesses use tools to help them be write less
code, implement more revenue models and measure the impact of
their product and marketing decisions.
A lot of the heavy-lifting is done by developer tools and APIs.

This reduces effort and time-to-market significantly but it still
pays to know what is going on underneath.
Peter Winkler
Freelancer
28
THE DIVERSE SPECTRUM OF APP DEVELOPERS

Developers are much more than just machines for turning coffee into code. They have many
and varied motivations for building their apps.
Although most of the developers on any one platform share common
tools and technology, they have very different goals, motivations and
definitions of success. Understanding developer motivations is critical
because many see developers as the new kingmakers; forward
thinking businesses realise that developers are their innovation
engine, their most promising affiliates, their evangelists or their
fastest growing resellers. Millions of dollars in marketing are
expended every year attempting to persuade developers to choose a
specific company, platform, tool or API set. Even small independent
developers themselves can benefit from a greater understanding of
whom theyre competing against.
The 8 developer segments

We have developed a segmentation model based upon the Jobs to Be
Done methodology, popularized by Harvard Professor Clay
Christensen and which constitutes todays cutting edge in
segmentation techniques. The model was produced using hard data
from over 6,000 developers in our Q3 2013 survey and consists of
eight developer segments - the Hobbyists, the Explorers, the
Hunters, the Guns for Hire, the Product Extenders, the Digital
Content Publishers, the Gold Seekers and the Enterprise IT

developers. You can see the definitions of the segments and what
motivates them in the infographic, along with how they collectively
make up the developer population and economy. These segments
have been relatively stable over the last 12 months, with the only
significant change a 4% increase in Explorers. This shift reflects the
increasing number of developers considering switching to mobile
platforms or building businesses in the app economy.
Platform preferences
The breakdown of developer segments that target each platform is
determined by how well the platforms help them meet their goals.
Adoption of iOS amongst Explorers and particularly Hobbyists is
limited - this is largely by design on Apples part. Its not possible to
test iOS apps on a real device without signing up for a $99/year
developer program membership. Apples App Store review policies
also actively discourage amateur hour warning of rejection for apps
that are not up to the expected standard. On the other hand, Hunters
are significantly more likely to adopt iOS because of its greater
revenue potential.
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Windows Phones developer population is biased the other way.

Hobbyists and Explorers are a significant proportion of those who
prioritise the platform. There are two key reasons for this. Firstly, the
much smaller installed base of Windows Phone devices makes it less
attractive to those who care about revenue (Hunters) or reach
(Product Extenders, Gold Seekers & Digital Content Publishers).
Secondly, there are a lot of Microsoft developers trained in C# and
related tools that find Windows Phone an easy way to get started
with mobile apps. The platform has grown sufficiently to attract
Hunters with successful apps on other platforms looking to gain extra
revenue from their established app assets and brands.
Notably lacking from both Microsoft and BlackBerrys new platforms

are the Enterprise IT developers and others trying to grow
businesses. It seems that whilst trying to create more consumer
friendly products they have lost a lot of their traditional enterprise
customer base. The last strongholds of the mobile browser are
amongst these same segments. Meanwhile, Androids dominance of
smartphone market volumes ensures that its the most popular
platform amongst all developer segments. Most importantly, those
that prioritise some other platform are very likely to also support
Android.
Even more importantly, if youre building tools for developers then

you need to know which ones to target in different stages of your
project (hint: usually the Hobbyists or Explorers first) and how to
design your marketing and incentives to reach them. For example,
Amazon has recently incentivized developers to target their new Fire
Phone with $5,000 of Amazon Coins for users to spend in or on each
of the developers apps that adopt certain new APIs specific to the
device. This may attract the minority of Hobbyists and Explorers
motivated by the money and Hunters that were interested in
supporting the platform anyway, however, the development and
marketing effort required makes it unlikely to be significantly
profitable for most Hunters. This incentive appears to target all 3 of
these segments whilst not aligning with any of them particularly well.
For Kenya and African countries the biggest challenge is initial

funding/financing there is much less funding available than for
companies in Europe. Even signing up for a developer account on
Apple is too expensive.
Bofya! (app publisher)
Why it pays to understand the developer segments

If youre building an app business then knowing about the
motivations of your competitors is vital. For example, if you were
hoping to make a living selling utilities on Android then youll face
competition from a lot of developers that are building them for fun
and dont need to make any profit.
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METHODOLOGY: BREAKING THE CEILING OF 10,000 APP DEVELOPERS

Developer Economics 7th edition reached an unprecedented
10,000+ respondents from 137 countries around the world. As such,
it is the largest ever research on app developers and trends in app
development. This report is based on a large-scale online developer
survey and one-to-one interviews with mobile app developers. The
online survey was designed, produced and carried out by
VisionMobile over a period of five weeks between April and May
2014. One-to-one interviews were conducted in May and June 2014.
distribution identified in our App Economy Forecasts (2013 - 2016)

report published in July 2013, as shown in the graph below.
Respondents to the online survey came from over 137 countries,

including major app development hotspots such as the US, China,
India, Israel, UK and Russia and stretching all the way to Kenya,
Brazil and Jordan. The geographic reach of this survey is truly
reflective of the global scale of the mobile app economy.
The online survey was translated in 6 languages (Chinese,
Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish) and promoted by
67 regional and media partners within the app development industry.
As a result, the survey reached an unprecedented number of
respondents, globally balanced across Europe (30.4%), Asia (37.1%)
and North America (24.6%). The online survey also attracted a
significant developer sample from South America (3.8%) and Africa
(2.4%).
To eliminate the effect of regional sampling biases, we weighted the
regional distribution by a factor that was determined by the regional
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The survey gathered responses from developers across 15 mobile

platforms including Android, Amazon Fire OS, BlackBerry 5/6/7,
BlackBerry 10, Firefox OS, iOS, Java ME, Jolla Sailfish, Mobile
Browser, Nokia X, Qt, Windows Phone, Windows 8 and Ubuntu
Phone.
factors. All results in the report are weighted by main platform,

region and developer segment.
To minimise the sampling bias for platform distribution across our

outreach channels, we weighted the responses to derive a
representative platform distribution. We compared the distribution
across a number of different developer outreach channels and
identified statistically significant channels that exhibited the lowest
variability from the platform medians across our whole sample base.
From these channels we excluded the channels of our research
partners to eliminate sampling bias due to respondents recruited via
these channels. We derived a representative platform distribution
based on independent, statistically significant channels to derive a
weighted platform distribution.
As we have shown in our Developer Segmentation report there is no
average developer: Our outcome-based segmentation model of eight
developer segments shows that the choices and views of developers
may vary wildly according to their desired outcomes in the app
economy. Hobbyists, who just want to have fun, and Explorers, who
are testing the app development grounds, think very differently as
compared to professional app developers such as Hunters, who are
after direct app revenues, and Product Extenders, who are using apps
to promote their non-app products. We have therefore also weighted
our results to minimize sampling bias for segment distribution across
our outreach channels to derive a representative developer segment
distribution.
By combining the regional, platform and developer segment
weighting we were able to minimise sampling biases due to these
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distilling market noise into market sense
34

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Contents

1. The Platform Wars Go Local

3. To go native, or not to go native, that is the question

Our mantra: distilling market noise into market sense.

5. The Next Gold Rush - Enterprise Apps

6. State of the Game Developer Nation

2. The Language of Apps

7. Tools of the App Developer Trade

North American App

App Profits and Costs

Developer Segmentation 2013

App Economy Forecasts

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Mark has over 13 years of experience in mobile software across a

Christina is responsible for all VisionMobile data projects. She leads

You can reach Mark at:

You can reach Christina at:

About Developer Economics

7. Developer tools - Revenues of developers using tools, top tool

Mark, Christina, Matos, AndreasP, AndreasC, Dimitris, Vanessa,

2. Language ranking - Most popular vs. most actively used

Wed like to thank everyone who helped us reach an unprecedented

3. Language lock-in - Language mix for Android, iOS, Windows

Our Marketing and Research Partners Digia, Intel, Microsoft,

4. App monetization - App revenues globally, Android vs. iOS, app

5. Consumer vs. enterprise - Revenues for developers targeting

6. Game developers - Revenues for mobile game developers, top

The future of HTML5 is beyond the browser. Although HTML5 is

combined. This suggests Microsoft should increase their focus on

Tools of the Trade

67% of mobile app developers primarily target consumers and 11%

Third party tools are a critical part of successful app businesses.

Currently iOS appears to be winning the battle for enterprise

The most popular category of tool is Ad Networks, with 30% of

THE PLATFORM WARS GO LOCAL

Developer attention consolidates

The average number of platforms a developer targets has fallen from

Windows Phone hanging on, BlackBerry 10 sees weaker

targeted the mobile browser as a platform. We also asked about the

HTML5 developers are abandoning the browser

THE LANGUAGE OF APPS

JavaScript and Java top the charts

GitHub and the number of new questions with relevant tags on

C, C++ and Objective-C - popular but not shared?

Microsofts C# language is the 5th most popular in our research and

Creating the right emotions for your customer is more

After C# we have Visual Development Tools, which have a relatively

Elizabetta Camilleri, Co-founder, SalesGossip

TO GO NATIVE, OR NOT TO GO NATIVE, THAT IS THE QUESTION

Android leads iOS in priority and loyalty

mobile developers primarily creating native Android apps against just

Microsoft developers the most loyal?

BlackBerry developers are keeping their options open

Windows Phone developers have the highest levels of investment in

The gap between HTML and native is widening. The native

THE DISAPPEARING MIDDLE CLASS OF APP DEVELOPERS

The Have Nothings - 47%

The Poverty Stricken - 22%

The Strugglers - 19%

I dropped Android due to fragmentation and low revenues.

The Haves - 12%

THE NEXT GOLD RUSH: ENTERPRISE APPS

Enterprises adopt mobile, particularly iOS

organisations, not just large corporations with IT departments.